I grew up in West Monroe, New York a small town 30 minutes outside the city of Syracuse. Since the beginning of 1st grade everyone I knew was friends with certain people and disliked everybody else. There were three teachers for each grade level, and depending on who your teacher was, said what kind of person you were. As for me in fourth grade I had Mr. Krisak, the cool, young, laid back teacher who everybody wanted to be their teacher. If you had Mrs. W or Mr. S, you were not as cool as Mr. K’s students. After fourth grade we all were mixed up into the fifth grade classes. There was Mrs. Appleton, Mrs. Wentworth and Mr. Curran. Mrs. Appleton was my teacher and she had the students who were all friends with everybody no matter how smart you were. The other two teachers had the very smart students who were in the higher level math than my classes.
As soon as we were done in elementary school we went to the middle school for grades six through eight. Students were divided into “houses” each named a specific color such as red, orange, yellow and blue. Those who were in the orange and yellow house were better known as the “cool” kids who were all friends with one another and nobody else. I remember that we all did our own activities and even when it came to birthday parties, weekends and dance, we all stayed with each other no matter who was there or who wasn’t. The red house was the next into acceptance from the orange and yellow house. These kids were all friends with one another but rarely hung out with anybody else because they were in their own house. Lastly is the blue house, the house that nobody associated with because they were the less intelligent students who nobody liked. This continued all throughout middle school and into high school. Once we all dispersed into the high school those who were friends in the colored houses remained friends.
Besides these groups of friends there were the athletic people, band geeks, artists, nerds and the cool people. Although we were all in our own groups we started to associate with people that we usually did not. During my high school career I was always playing lacrosse and being on JV and Varsity you are mixed with girls from all grade levels. I soon came to become friends with girls who were active in band, musical, and those who were very smart that I never thought I would. Again when I was in AP Biology senior year, four girls and myself always stuck together until we began to talk with our classmates who were not considered our best friends, but were nice.
